MR. BROWN COMMENTS ABOUT THE BERKELEY DAILY PLANET
NEWSPAPER AND A CERTAIN COLUMNIST TOWARDS THE END OF THE INTERVIEW. THOSE COMMENTS
ARE HIGHLIGHTED IN BOLD.

THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW

Attorney General Moonbeam?California's protean politician opens a new chapter.

BY JILL STEWARTSaturday, October 14, 2006 12:01 a.m.

LONG BEACH, Calif.--The most enduring and intriguing California politician of
our generation is sitting in a sidewalk café, enjoying a balmy offshore breeze
in this city's upscale Belmont Shore district. Yet not a single passerby knows it's
him.

He's just emerged from a nearly invisible summer to launch a blatantly negative TV
ad against his rival for attorney general of California, and he's finally granting
interviews--including one to me. Barring a brilliant turnaround by his lesser-known
but respected competitor, Republican state Sen. Charles Poochigian of Fresno, Mr.
Brown will be the next California attorney general.

Some might find it unthinkable that the new sheriff in town could be "Governor
Moonbeam"--the dreamy lefty, former boyfriend of Linda Ronstadt and student
of Zen Buddhism. As governor, Mr. Brown fought the popular and successful tax revolution/reduction
known as Proposition 13; vetoed a law to restore the death penalty; and sparked one
of the state's bitterest political controversies by appointing Rose Bird to chief
justice of the California Supreme Court--a lightning-rod figure who voted to overturn
every death penalty case she considered.

Yet today most voters like him, and he's gotten mostly glowing press for his nearly
eight-year stint as Oakland's mayor; in 1999 he was even praised by the conservative
City Journal for his crime-fighting in the troubled city. These days, just
about the only newspaper regularly whacking him is the leftist Berkeley Daily
Planet.

Such contradictions abound in Mr. Brown's quest to become California's top lawyer.
There's his hardened attitude toward criminals, his criticism of anti-development
"progressives," his warmth for conservatives. Yet even if you appreciate
his bigger tent, it's worth remembering that Mr. Brown, who once told Salon that
"politics is based on illusions," has had 37 years to wrap himself in them.

"How are you being paid for this article?" he fires as I settle in my chair
at trendy Bono's, founded by the late Sonny Bono's eldest daughter, Christy. When
I say I'm freelancing, he chuckles: "Then you're making money off me."
Clearly out to turn the tables for our little chat, Mr. Brown then promptly slams
the Daily Planet, saying the paper repeatedly and wrongly reported that he
tried "to remove the black leadership of Oakland, and they have always quoted
or used that description against me, that my efforts were a racist move! In order
to try to get me! . . . My efforts in Oakland had nothing to do with racism!
The people who needed to go just happened to be African-Americans. I was the insurgent
moving in to--as I've said for 30 years--'throw the ins out'!"

When I chide him, noting that journalists have in fact been very easy on him lately,
aside from the Daily Planet, he barks: "Because it's a nothing little
paper! Joyce Roy who writes for them? I know her brother-in-law! He doesn't like
me! The other guy who writes about me is nothing! He's nobody! These people!"
I defend the small paper, saying it publishes in-depth coverage of him and recently
described him as "libertarian." The mayor leans toward me and chortles:
"Oh God no! That should endear me to you!"

In 1992, during a third run for president, Mr. Brown began espousing surprising views,
such as support for a flat tax. Then he launched his radio show, "We the People,"
which he hosted while living in a warehouse in Oakland's Jack London Square. The
"old Jerry," as critics say, was still around in 1997, yakking on the radio
with perpetually angry actor Mike Farrell that "banning capital punishment takes
us to a higher state of consciousness." Still, a metamorphosis of sorts was
underway. That became apparent after Mr. Brown began his first term as mayor in 1999,
taking on the ossified and race-baiting Black Oakland establishment, leftist unions
and Nimbys. In 2003, he publicly criticized Gov. Gray Davis while other big Democrats,
including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, fought hard to save the doomed governor from recall.

Explaining his relations with his own party (for a time in 1998 he was a "decline
to state" independent, yet from 1989 to '91 he chaired the California Democratic
Party), he says he's "surprised at how people who call themselves progressives
have a very, very regressive approach to maintaining old garages or saving old warehouses,
stifling innovation in what's either a blighted or totally undeveloped area. I've
learned that the partisan prism is not the most accurate instrument for coping with
urban reality."

Yet he is, to some critics, the most leftist, disastrous governor California ever
had. Despite his 15-percentage point lead in the Field Poll, a hefty 36% of Californians
disapprove of him. His rival, Mr. Poochigian, insists that Mr. Brown's evolving attitudes
are cynical spin, and that he's achieved only cosmetic fixes in stunningly violent
Oakland.

Mr. Brown's spin can indeed be dizzying. When I ask him about the debate over his
crime reduction claims, he exclaims: "There's not a debate! There have been
far fewer crimes since I have been mayor than in the previous seven years. And that
is a fact!" In fact, the previous seven years include a 1991-92 crime surge,
making his subsequent seven years look better. Moreover, Mr. Brown lumps homicides
with lesser crimes, yet homicides have skyrocketed in 2006 in Oakland. They will
surpass 120 this month, and will far exceed last year's 94 killings.

But Mr. Brown is hardly just talk. He took on an apoplectic teacher's union and enraged
East Bay leftists by opening Oakland Military School, a public charter in partnership
with the California National Guard that accepts extremely low-achieving inner-city
students. He still opposes the death penalty, but in his fight to clean up Oakland
he has placed a curfew on hardcore parolees, funded high-tech "license recognition"
scanners to spot stolen cars, and just purchased a city "shot spotter"
to locate gunshot noise.

As attorney general, Mr. Brown wants to target prisoner recidivism in
California, where roughly 120,000 convicts are released annually, and 80,000 returned
to prison annually. "They have 8th-grade reading levels, no skills, their attitudes
are bad, many are addicted to drugs and they are coming back to disrupt the community,"
he says. "That's why I'm putting GPS bracelets on them in Oakland. Whether they
are active enough that we can root them out of certain neighborhoods at curfew and
enforce it--well, I am at least attempting to compensate for the failed parole system."

In 2005, he joined top Republicans and district attorneys to successfully fight a
ballot measure that would have softened California's "three strikes, you're
out" law. I ask him how he justified his views to progressive Bay Area buddies,
given that 50 to 100 people are reportedly doing life in prison for committing tiny
"third strike" offenses like shoplifting. "I doubt there's even that
many, among our 7,500 people in on third strike," he says. "But if Al Capone
were picked up on income tax, do you want to say we shouldn't put him in jail? They
didn't just steal pizzas. These people often terrorized their neighborhoods."

His tough talk frustrates his consistently tough-on-crime opponent, Mr. Poochigian,
who aired attack ads claiming that as governor Mr. Brown pardoned seven murderers
and signed a prisoners' bill of rights that let child molesters have sex magazines.
Running late for a reception with a gathering of coin collectors ("Coin collectors
are backing me," the mayor says without irony), he promises to respond to Mr.
Poochigian's charges.

A few days later he does so. On the phone from his campaign headquarters, he tells
me, "Well, [Gov.] Ronald Reagan pardoned 40 murderers and I pardoned seven.
I have all the pardons right here--I went and got them." All seven had been
out of prison many years. One was pardoned upon recommendation of the victim's family,
another after years of volunteerism.

When I suggest that his rival is probably more concerned about his lifelong opposition
to the death penalty, because the AG sits on a three-person panel that confirms top
gubernatorial judicial nominations, he erupts: "This is completely disingenuous!
I am not going to interrogate the people like this is a test. This doesn't have a
shred of integrity! For them to bootstrap the argument about my views on capital
punishment to my role on the judicial committee is just so!--so!--so!--"

Suddenly, a gracious female voice invades our phone discussion. My first illogical
thought is "cell phone interference." But then Mr. Brown says hello to
the voice, and the voice states, "This is his wife. I am terribly sorry to interrupt,
but things are backing up and he really has to go."

It's Anne Gust--Mrs. Jerry Brown--a former top executive at the Gap who quit to become
his campaign manager. How long has she been listening on that back line? Did she
hear me describing her as "a big fancy businesswoman" after her husband
told me she regularly cooks his dinner, and I, light-heartedly, voiced doubts? "I
didn't hear that," she chuckles, "I just this second picked up. Can I get
your schedule and number, to give to him?" The longtime duo is very close, and
they've sold their big Jack London Square warehouse to share a 1,700-square-foot
loft in what was once, according to Mr. Brown, "the hardware department"
in an old Sears Roebuck.

As promised, the mayor calls back, seemingly in mid-sentence, still slamming anyone
who says he might try to circumvent the death penalty: "My job is to defend
the death penalty!"

Is there any way to turn down the intensity that is Jerry Brown? Should anybody even
want to? Over several days' time, he's treated me to an onslaught of unbending, no-nonsense
comments. I give him one final chance to admit to the softy side he has so carefully
cemented over for this campaign.

"If you want to hear me be progressive, I can say this," he says. "I
think people should get an education in prison. . . . We want people to
succeed and reduce the return rate." He describes a city parolee program he
admires, but ends with this: "I saw a body on the sidewalk right outside my
building. The first time I heard it [gunfire], I thought it was firecrackers. But
my wife said 'No, that's gunfire.' Now I know what it sounds like."